It is becoming increasingly inconvenient to be disconnected from email, instant messaging (IM), short message service (SMS), and other similar electronic messaging systems, even for short periods of time. To be sure, expansion of wireless connectivity and improved portability of wireless communication devices have made staying connected easier than ever. At the same time, it is still inconvenient to create relatively long text messages from portable wireless devices, such as personal digital assistants (PDAs) and cellular telephones. And it is also inconvenient constantly to carry around even smaller notebook and tablet computers. Furthermore, sometimes email, contact information, and files (which a user may want to attach to email) are best available from a particular physical location, for example, one's place of employment. In sum, there are circumstances when sending email needs to be done from a remote server using a portable communication device that is not well suited for typing long messages and attaching files.
Telephone systems and telephone service providers offer a wide range of voice communication services, including call answering, voice messaging, and automated attendant (auto attendant) services. With the trend towards combining voice communications with electronic communications (e.g., email, IM, SMS, facsimile), unified messaging systems have emerged. In a unified messaging systems, multiple types of communication services are available to a subscriber. For example, a subscriber's voice, facsimile, email, IM, and other messages may be stored on such a system and made available to the subscriber upon demand. The subscriber may be able to log into such system remotely, and receive (view, listen to) voice and electronic messages, as well as send electronic messages and originate telephone calls from the system. The system may also include additional capabilities intended to facilitate communications with the subscriber when the subscriber is connected to the system remotely through a telephone network. For example, the system may include a text-to-speech converter for reading to the remotely-connected subscriber stored facsimile and email messages.
The difficulty of remotely sending text messages, however, remains unabated, because this difficulty is a result of the limited size of portable devices, and of unavailability to the subscriber of a communication device with a relatively large size keyboard and locally-stored files that the subscriber may wish to attach to email.